


As Free as Fishes

by WithBroomBefore



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Newsies, Broadway, Multi, Musicals
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-08-08
Updated: 2017-10-05
Packaged: 2018-12-12 15:10:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 7,543
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11739612
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WithBroomBefore/pseuds/WithBroomBefore
Summary: Shiro snorted softly. "You wouldn't last a week in the desert."





	1. Prologue

Shiro snorted softly. “You wouldn’t last a week in the desert.”

“I might,” Keith protested. He didn’t need to look over to feel the disbelief, radiating like Shiro’s body heat against his left side. Instead, he dropped his head back against the roof. For all the chill that would come later, it was warm too, the afternoon’s heat not yet dissipated. Keith tucked his cap beneath his head and looked straight up. It was just past dusk. The last remnants of sunset clung long-fingered in the west, orange and bright peach licked with molten gold. Keith could have, probably should have, been watching it; he had almost gotten the colors right, last time, but they were never quite there.

He didn’t want sunset tonight, though. Directly above him, there was nothing but blue, and it drew him inexorably in. It was the hour when you couldn’t see stars at first glance but they appeared between one blink and another. “Is it getting darker so gradually we can’t tell?” he wondered aloud. “Or are our eyes adjusting to see them?”

Shiro shifted to tuck his left hand under his head. “The stars, you mean?”

“Mm,” Keith affirmed.

They both watched the sky for a while. “Both, maybe,” Shiro said. They had done this so many times that the words slid into Keith’s mind like his own thoughts.

“I’ve never gotten that blue right,” he said. “Not even close. It goes through so many shades it should be easy to land on one of them, but…” He sighed. The stars were full out now. If he turned his head, he knew, there would be no glimmer of sunset, but the bright glitter of the city at night hovered at the edge of his vision.

The roof had cooled under his back. Keith shook his head, breaking the pull of the deep blue above, and scrambled up. He offered his hand and Shiro took it with the habitual motion of years. Kneeling to arrange his blankets, Keith tipped his head back for one final look upward. The night had settled into itself now, steadying into the not-quite-black that was the backdrop for the first act. Behind him, Shiro shifted into his own nest. “Go to sleep, Keith,” he mumbled. “It’s an early morning tomorrow.”

“Isn’t it always,” Keith said, without bitterness, and obeyed.


	2. It's a Fine Life

It was late August, which meant that the early morning air was cool but not uncomfortably so. It also meant that there was light for them. Keith paused at the edge of the roof for a moment. There was no color to the light yet, which made it horrendously difficult to replicate. If he stayed, he might be able to catch the exact moment that it became blue.

Shiro had paused on the first platform down. He wasn’t looking up but instead leaned against the railing, eyes on the near-empty streets below. Keith shook himself, settled his cap more firmly, and followed. They picked their way down in silence, as was their habit. There wouldn’t be quiet again until that night.

The mood was broken before their feet touched pavement. “Hey! That’s my cigar!” came Nyma’s yelp.

Rolo hurtled around the corner and bounded up a stack of crates. “You’ll steal another,” he said, which was likely true. Then the others were upon them. Keith sat down on the lowest platform, legs dangling, and let the noise wash over him. It shouldn’t, he thought, make sense for the endless bickering to make him as comfortable as the empty sky had the night before. Somehow, though, this moment - Shiro leaning against the rail above him, Rolo catching his eye to wink from his own perch, the mess of bodies and voices below - filled the same space in his mind.

Someone said something about somebody else’s mother, which was just about the only thing guaranteed a unified response. _“Who asked you,”_ Keith bellowed with the rest of them, and heard Shiro chuckle. In the beat before the argument could pick up again, he dropped lightly to the ground. Nyma grinned at him and then over his shoulder as Shiro landed. Rolo scrambled down too, and they all followed Keith toward the gates.

The headline sent a groan rippling through the group. The trolley strike had been a blessing the first week, a chore to sell the second. A third meant that some of them would be skipping more meals than they did already. Keith kept his shoulders from sagging, but he couldn’t hide the twist of his mouth when Nyma caught his eye.

The rattle of sticks against the bars snapped their attention forward. It was Sendak and Prorok this morning, which was not ideal. Keith kept to the middle of the group as the gates opened. He clenched his hands, nails digging into his palms, when Prorok aimed a blow at Rolo. The other boy was grinning as he ducked, so there was a decent chance that he had started it. It was not unlike most mornings. Keith kept moving forward. They were almost through when a stray blow of Sendak’s stick slammed squarely into Shiro’s right shoulder. He staggered, left hand going to the empty sleeve, and grunted. Keith wheeled round and slammed the heel of his hand into Sendak’s jaw. The mercenary roared and grabbed for him, but the mood had shifted and the newsies were already scattering.

“I’ll see you back in the Refuge,” Sendak snarled.

Keith danced backward. Laughter bubbled madly in his chest. “You’ll have to catch me first,” he pointed out, and ran.

He wasn’t followed. Morning weren’t for serious hunting, especially if it might interfere with the paper’s profits. The guards took themselves off, presumably back to the trolley workers. Like startled sparrows reclaiming a scrap of pavement, the newsies were back in place in a moment.

Someone shoved gently against Keith. When he looked up, Shiro’s face was serious. Voice low, he said, “Do we need to revisit our deal?”

The brief adrenaline high slipped away. “No.” Keith frowned at his shoes. The silence beside him demanded more. “No heroics,” he elaborated, looking up and sideways. “Won’t happen again.”

There was more to the deal than that, but Shiro let it go. “See that it doesn’t.”

The ragged line was forming, and they joined the end of it. Not that it mattered much today - the headline ensured that there would be plenty of papers to sell and probably plenty left over. Weisel was cutting the twine when Nyma, ahead of them, turned and whistled.

“New blood,” Rolo called, without much interest, and faced front again. Keith and Shiro turned around.

There were two of them. He saw the kid first because the morning light caught the glasses. They were of indiscernible gender and age, somewhere between eleven and fifteen, their clothes well-made under the dust. They took in the whole arrangement with no expression and joined the line, glaring up at Keith. “Morning,” he offered, keeping his face carefully straight.

“Hi,” the kid said, even that a challenge.

Shiro snorted. “Remind you of anyone?”

“Shut up,” Keith said.

“Be nice, Pidge.” That was the other new one. Keith lifted his eyes and kept lifting them, because he was nearly as tall as Shiro. This one had the opposite sort of clothes from the kid: worn and not particularly well fitting, but as clean as it was possible to be on these streets. The boy looked to be around Keith’s own age, with brown skin and hair that might have been smoothed with water to keep it flat. The eyes that met his were bright blue.

The boy smiled. It was the expression of someone who genuinely liked people; if he was nervous, it didn’t show. “Lance,” he said, offering a hand. His cuffs weren’t long enough to keep from showing his wrists.

“Keith.” The long fingers were warm in his, and he dropped his arm quickly. “First day?”

The smile slanted wryly. “That obvious, huh?” Lance lifted his eyes to Shiro, who introduced himself in turn. The brief moment when he offered his left hand was less awkward than it sometimes was, Keith noted approvingly - Lance was quick on the uptake, and his smile didn’t lose its sincerity.

“The little one’s Pidge,” Lance informed them, one arm over their shoulders.

It was a familiar gesture. “Siblings?” Keith asked, before he caught himself. "Sorry, you don't have to -"

Pidge made a face. “Nah,” Lance said easily. “They’re just keeping me out of trouble. Most of mine are home with the family.”

There was a brief odd moment. The girl in front of Shiro turned around and demanded, “You’ve got parents?”

Lance blinked, blue eyes wide. “Um. Yeah?” His smile had gone uncertain at the attention. Anyone who hadn’t been listening before was now doing so.

“What are you doing here, then?” That was Nyma; her chin was tilted dangerously up. Pidge and Lance exchanged a look. Keith bit back the urge to interrupt: it was a reasonable question, even if something in him objected to the way Lance swallowed hard.

“My dad’s a trolley worker,” he said, meeting Nyma’s gaze. “Met up with the, what’s the word? Enforcers, I guess. Last week.” His mouth was tight. “So here we are.”

The group seemed to find this acceptable. Three weeks in, there weren’t any who didn’t know the situation. The line started to move; Nyma and the rest turned away.

Keith didn’t. Pidge and Lance were exchanging another look, and it hadn’t slipped his notice that the kid was saved from having to provide their own explanation.

Not that it mattered. It was one of Keith’s favorite things about the job: nobody cared why you were here or who you’d been before. He caught Lance’s eye when he looked up. “You’ll do all right,” he said. “The littles always sell well.” Pidge’s glare came back full force; he shrugged, unimpressed. “It’s the job, kid.” To Lance, he said, “You just keep looking at people with those big earnest eyes and you’ll be just fine.”

He turned to face forward before he could see more than the tension slipping away from Lance’s mouth. He pointedly did not catch Shiro’s eye.


	3. Carrying the Banner

In the ten minutes it took them to reach the top of the line, Lance had settled in enough to start talking. It should have been irritating, Keith thought. Had they been anywhere else, it would have had the ring of a well-run con. Lance was learning the group as he inserted himself into it. There could be nothing to gain from this group, though, so it must simply be the way he was.

“Is he always like this?” Keith murmured to Pidge. Lance was talking to Nyma and Rolo, who had swung back to them after collecting their papers. This in itself was telling: normally, they were off immediately to claim the prime spots. He seemed to be flirting with both at once, not without some success. Rolo was laughing.

“Usually,” Pidge replied. “More so when he’s nervous, but yeah. Pretty much this.”

“Fascinating.” Keith shook his head. Lance caught his eye over Nyma’s shoulder and winked. He bit back a smile and turned after Shiro to buy his papers. For all his chatter, it transpired, Lance had missed how the process actually worked. “I’ll pay you after I sell them,” he told Weisel. “Right?” His smile had faltered again. Pidge had drawn closer to his side, looking young and anxious.

Nyma’s laugh was a mix of bitterness and sympathy. Rolo had already turned away, and she followed him. There was kindness in the departure, Keith thought; he should do the same. However desperate their situation, there was always some scrap of shame that could add to it, and an audience made it worse. Shiro was hesitating a few steps away, watching Keith. Lance let his head drop for a moment. That he didn’t have the money was there in the way his hands fisted deep into his pockets, and he had already swallowed his pride to be here at all. He let out a breath and raised his head. He was smiling again, though there was no pleasure in this one. In a moment he would turn and leave, life that much worse than before.

Keith was moving before he decided to do it. He did have the money - when he had it, he brought enough to account for a proper headline, and today had not merited all of it - and he dropped ninety cents into Weisel’s outstretched hand. The man shrugged, uncaring where the coins came from, and began to count out the papers.

“What?” Lance said. “Wait, no, you can’t - I can’t do that.” He searched Keith’s face with wide blue eyes.

“You can pay me back at the end of the day.” Keith lifted his chin and met the look. “Come on. Be half as obnoxiously friendly as you were before and you’ll sell out.” Lance swallowed, wavering. Pidge had wasted no time in seizing their stack, and Keith nodded to them. “See? The kid’s smarter than you are.”

That got through. “Tell me something I don’t know,” Lance murmured. His shoulders dropped. It was a gesture of acceptance, though, and he took his papers. The blue eyes were direct when he looked back at Keith. “Thank you.” There was no trace of the flirtation from earlier. Keith felt his color rising anyway. He shrugged and turned away.

Shiro gave him one swift, complicated look before nodding to the other two. “Are you coming, then?” Keith relaxed a little. Shiro’s sincerity, when he chose to use it, sapped the awkwardness from any situation. Pidge darted after them. Lance followed, long legs catching up easily until he was beside Keith.

“What are the secrets of the trade, then?” He grinned down. “You’ll have to give us some tips if you want your money back.”

“First,” Shiro said drily, “don’t be like Keith until he’s on the job. He’s the best of us, but only when he’s selling. The glare is not part of it.”

“Be like Shiro,” Keith suggested. “Gaze earnestly at people and explain how you sincerely think that this paper, this very one, is essential to their happiness. Just today, though, because they need to come back tomorrow.”

“Precisely,” Shiro said, holding a dignified expression for a few seconds before it cracked. “Seriously, though -”

“Seriously.” Keith stopped. They were nearly to his preferred starting street. “You - “ to Pidge - “Play up the age. I don’t care how old you really are. Out there, you’re ten or eleven at most. Look at them through those ridiculous glasses and convince them that they’re saving you from the gutter.” Pidge nodded determinedly. They seemed to shrink; then they looked up at him, brown eyes huge, and pushed the glasses up their nose with a shaky hand. Keith laughed. “Excellent.”

“That was deeply disturbing,” Lance said.

“You,” Keith said, and looked at him for a moment. “I actually have nothing for you. Just do what you were doing in line earlier.”

“Really?” Lance frowned. “But -”

“Come talk to me in an hour if it doesn’t work,” Keith said, “but it will.” He stepped out into the street and looked up and down it. “All right, we don’t want to overlap too much.” Shiro was already heading for his usual spot a block down. “He’ll catch the livery traffic,” Keith explained. “Pidge, go across the street from him, outside the millinery. Look pathetic for the fancy hat ladies.” Pidge pushed their glasses up again, this time with fierce intent, and went.

Lance was looking at him with open delight. “What?” Keith demanded.

“Nothing,” Lance said. “I just like watching people be really good at things. Where to, boss?”

The word made Keith draw back. “Wherever you want,” he said coldly. “None of us work for anyone else. That’s the whole point.” He regretted it almost immediately as Lance’s face fell. There was an awkward moment of silence. “If you want my advice, though,” Keith relented, “you’ll follow me to up the block and set up at the general store across the street. We’ll get both sides that way without competing with Shiro and Pidge.” Lance brightened at once, and Keith ducked his head to hide his answering smile as they started off.


	4. Never Planned on You

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “You kiss that boy yet?” Shiro said that night. They had just gone to bed, so it was a voice out of the dark.
> 
> “No,” Keith said. “Not yet.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ahaha. I'm getting way more invested in this ridiculous thing than planned. Is anyone following me into this nichest of niche universes? Don't know, don't care (though if anyone wants to draw the paladins in Newsies caps, my undying love will be yours).

Some hours later, Keith watched Lance pick forty-five cents out from a handful of change and said, “Told you it would work.”

“Yes you did!” Lance dropped the coins into Keith’s palm, teeth flashing in a grin.

“Hey.” Keith peered up at him. “Drop the salesman face. We’re done for the day.”

Lance blinked, startled. Then his expression shifted. When it settled, the smile was smaller, higher on one side than the other. “Better?”

“Much.” Keith found his own mouth turning up in response. “It went well, then?”

Lance let out a breath, his shoulders lifting and settling. “I think so. Sold everything, anyway, though it was slow by the end.”

“That’s about as good as it gets.” They headed towards the junction where they had left Shiro and Pidge that morning.

“What happens if we don’t?” Lance wanted to know. “Does the World buy them back?”

Keith snorted. There was no humor in the sound.

“Oh.” Lance thought about it. “That hardly seems fair to us.”

“Yeah, well. We’re not exactly in on the business decisions.” Keith shrugged. “Anyway. You’ll do more tomorrow, if you decide to come back. Just make sure to save enough to buy them in the morning.”

“Why wouldn’t I come back?” Lance sounded genuinely curious.

Keith looked up and sideways at him. “You don’t need to pretend it’s a great job. It’s not exactly something anyone does if they have a choice.”

“I didn’t mind it.” The tone was sincere enough. “Do you?”

“I’m kind of weird,” Keith said. “Ask Shiro.” They walked in silence for a moment. “It’s just draining some days. I’m not as naturally friendly as some people.” He flicked his eyes over and was rewarded with a smile.

“Could’ve fooled me,” Lance said. “You sold more than twice what I did. It makes sense, though - it takes a particular kind of energy to talk to that many strangers.”

“You’re telling me.” Waiting for a break in the afternoon traffic, Keith closed his eyes and rolled his head back on his neck for a moment. “Some days I don’t even talk to Shiro when we get home.”

Lance opened his mouth to say something else, but then their opening came and they darted across the street. Shiro and Pidge were waiting for them outside the general store. Keith raised his eyebrows at Pidge, who reached into their pocket and intently counted out forty-five cents. “You were right,” they told him. “The glasses look did it.”

Keith nodded, satisfied. “Thought so.”

Shiro had been sitting with his back against the wall. Now he got to his feet, movements a little stiffer than usual. “I’m heading home,” he said. “I’ll see you two tomorrow, if you come back.”

Keith looked at him sharply. The care with which Shiro held himself reminded him abruptly of Sendak’s stick slamming into his shoulder. “I’ll come with you,” he said, and Shiro nodded. Keith tilted his head at the others. “Good job today.”

“We’ll see you in the morning,” Lance said firmly. Pidge nodded emphatically.

“All right, then,” Keith said, and they went their separate ways.

Shiro and Keith made their way home in what would have been silence but for the endless noise of the city around them. “I liked them,” was all Shiro said, after they were finally home.

“They were all right,” Keith allowed.

* * *

They were back the next morning. And as simply as that, the routine was in place. Shiro and Pidge liked to choose a base and stay there, one on each side of the street. Keith and Lance took the cross street. After the first few days, Lance adopted Keith’s method of moving constantly up and down, sometimes roaming for blocks. By wordless agreement, they all four met back up in the afternoons. Some days, usually the slower ones, they wandered the city together. On others, Shiro took himself home early. There were more than a few when Pidge would bid them goodbye as soon as their papers were gone and depart without explanation. Often as not, that left Lance and Keith on their own. After that first day, Lance seemed to have no particular place to be any more than Keith did.

“What would you do?” Lance asked. “If you could do anything, I mean.”

They were all four there that day, and they had wandered down to the shore and found a jetty to sun on.

Keith, who was lying on his back to watch the clouds scud across the pale summer sky, said, “Nope. Thinking about that is a good way to be miserable. I’m fine here.”

Lance was near him, as was usual. He lay on his stomach so he could trail one hand in the water. With it, he flicked droplets at Keith’s face. “You’re no fun.”

“I know,” Keith agreed peaceably. He studied the gradation of color from the faded tint at the horizon to the deeper blue above. It made it difficult to tell whether the clouds were similarly varied or whether they only seemed so because of the contrast.

Shiro said, “Keith wants to go west. Make his fortune.” He was sitting up, looking out at the water. The same wind that drove the clouds sent whitecaps across it.

He felt Lance’s surprised look as surely as he felt the flush rise in his face, but it was Pidge who asked. “Why? Not that it’s a bad idea,” they amended hastily. “But you never said.”

“Do you not like it here?” Lance’s tone was carefully neutral.

“I do,” Keith replied, cheeks cooling as he thought about his response. “It’s just - don’t you ever want to see what else is out there?”

“I’ve always wanted to be a navigator,” Shiro said. It was an answer as well as a way to move the conversation on, for which Keith was grateful.

“See?” Lance said, after a moment. “Some people know how to play. Why, Shiro?”

“I like knowing where I’m going,” Shiro said. “And I like choosing where that is, even if it’s somewhere I haven’t been before.” He pulled his gaze from the water. “Pidge?”

They sat at edge, feet dangling. Even so, they were short enough that their toes did not brush the water. “Engineer,” they said at once. “I want to build things. Interesting ones.”

That was unsurprising. Keith dropped his head back. Without looking, he nudged Lance in the ribs with one foot. “Well? You started it.”

“I started it because I have no idea,” Lance said. He rolled onto his back and scooted until they were shoulder to shoulder. He opened his mouth, then closed it again. Keith felt his shrug. “Don’t even know where to start.”

Keith turned his head, just enough to see his face. There was an unhappy curl to Lance’s mouth that he wasn’t used to seeing. “Is that a bad thing?”

Lance looked at him, blue eyes very close. That was a color, Keith realized, that he had no idea how to replicate. _My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun,_ he thought, nonsensically, because most of his reading apart from the paper had been in Coran’s library. That wasn’t even what the line meant, in context. Lance’s mouth turned up, then, and he lost the thought. “I guess it doesn’t have to be.”

* * *

“You kiss that boy yet?” Shiro said that night. They had just gone to bed, so it was a voice out of the dark.

“No,” Keith said. “Not yet.”

Shiro huffed a laugh. “You are going to, then.”

“I’m just taking my time.” Keith watched clouds dart across the crescent moon and remembered the warmth of Lance’s shoulder against his. “I don’t want to rush this one.”

“You say that like you ever do,” Shiro pointed out sleepily. Keith heard him yawn and settle more deeply into his blankets.

“Yeah, well.” His jaw creaked in its own yawn. “‘Night, Shiro.”

There was a smile in his voice when Shiro replied. “‘Night, Keith.”

* * *

He hadn’t seen Sendak or Prorok for nearly two weeks, not since Lance’s first day, so he couldn’t really be surprised when they found him again. It could very easily have been far worse: it was nearly dusk, and Shiro had left them earlier. When the white shirts and black ties appeared down the street, years of habit took over. Keith snarled a curse, spun on his heel, and bolted. He heard Lance say, startled, “Keith, what -” He was already running. There were shouts behind him. Closer and more concerning were the footsteps, but then Lance drew even with him. “Where to?” Pidge, short legs and all, was at his heels.

Keith couldn’t spare the breath to answer. Instead, he darted across the street, dodging carriages - it was far too busy to be safe, but perhaps that would slow pursuit - and sprinted down the alley on the other side. Halfway down, he turned his speed into momentum for a jump. The iron of a platform took shape under his hand; adrenaline and muscle memory took him up and over the railing. He did turn and check on the others then, forcing back the instinct that screamed at him to keep going. Lance was tall enough that he could have gotten up on his own, but he had stopped to lift Pidge. Keith grabbed their wrists and hauled them up, then pointed wordlessly towards the roof. They went without hesitation, monkey-like. Then Lance was there in an awkward but effective flurry of long legs and arms. Keith seized his hand and started up the narrow stair. They were nearly to the roof before more footsteps rounded the corner into the alley. The iron under their feet and hands shook as someone hauled himself heavily onto it, but then they were over the lip of the roof with half the city before them. Pidge crouched at the far edge, pale face turned back in the half-dark. Keith sprinted by them and jumped. Lance’s hand, still in his, tightened; he whooped a breathless laugh in Keith’s ear, and something in his chest unclenched a little. It wasn’t more than a few feet over and down. Pidge landed beside them, lightfooted - of course they would take to this - and they were off.

Keith lost track of how long they ran. It wasn’t blind - he knew every inch of this part of the city, roofs to alleys - but he wasn’t making particularly conscious decisions, either. They had probably lost Sendak and Prorok after the first jump or two, but the momentum carried them far past that. Finally, Keith came back to himself to find green slate under his toes. He switched directions abruptly and made for a dormer window. He let go of Lance’s hand to jiggle the frame just so, and it popped open. There was a black curtain between it and the room inside. Keith looked back and found the other two were watching him. Pidge’s head was tilted, their gaze intent; Lance was breathing hard. He caught Keith’s eyes and grinned. “We’re with you, buddy.” Keith found himself grinning back. He ducked around the curtain, pulled it aside for the others, and closed the window firmly behind them.

It was near dark inside, and he grabbed at both of them to keep them still. “Let your eyes adjust,” he murmured, doing the same. He had Pidge’s bony shoulder under one hand, shifting as they tried to look around. Lance was unusually still; his hand was warm against the small of Keith’s back. Keith swallowed.

The dark started to resolve itself into shapes. Before it could do so completely, a door opened somewhere below them and let in a stream of light. With the light came a sweep of silk skirts. In the light, they could see what Keith had already known: the window had spat them out onto a rough balcony. The rest of the room was a jumble of wood, coarse fabric, and ropes; some of the latter wound around pulleys affixed to the floor and lost themselves in the darkness overhead. The person in the silk lifted a lantern, sending its light glinting off of red hair. “Show yourselves,” came the crisp light voice. ”I’ve no patience with intruders, and no time to waste.”

Keith let go of the others and jumped the eight feet to the floor. “Even me, Coran?”

Behind him, Pidge followed suit. Lance dangled off the balcony by his hands before dropping the rest of the way. They both moved cautiously up on either side.

Coran set the lantern on the floor so that he could prop his hands on his hips. “Keith Kogane, as I live and breathe. Where on earth have you been?”

Keith rubbed one hand sheepishly up the back of his head. “Busy.”

The sharp eyes, heavy with stage makeup, flicked down to Pidge and lingered a moment on Lance before resettling on Keith’s face. One penciled eyebrow rose. “I see.”

He was red again, but he couldn’t help smiling, especially when Coran hauled him into a hug. He smelled like makeup and perfume, underscored with the sawdust and paint that was the theatre itself, and Keith relaxed into it. “Sorry for busting in on you,” he said into the silk, then pulled back. “We’ll get out of your way before the show.”

“You’ll do nothing of the sort,” Coran informed them firmly. “It’s already started, anyway.” He turned his attention to the others and extended a gloved hand. “Welcome to the Five Lions. Friends of Keith’s are friends of mine. Call me Coran.”

Lance took the hand, blue eyes wide. Pidge said, “Can we watch the show?”

“Pidge!” Lance said, but Coran tilted his head back and laughed.

“I like this one, Keith,” he said. “I think we can find some room in the house.” They followed him through the maze that was the back half of the theatre. “I’m glad you’re here, lad,” Coran said, drawing Keith’s arm through one of his. He had dropped his voice - judging from the music ahead, the show had already started - but his diction meant that it made little difference. “We’re using your drop tonight, and I wanted to commission another. Or several. Several would be lovely.”

“Really?” Keith said, before he could stop himself, and Coran patted his hand. Behind them, Lance and Pidge were keeping pace and listening.

“Really, lad. You’re rather significantly better than you think.” With his free hand, he tapped gloved fingers against his painted lips. “Midday with a few clouds, I think, and a sunset. Certainly another night. Perhaps a stormy one this time.” They paused by the next doorway. It was cracked slightly open; the singing was much closer now. “I’ll pay you, of course. I still owe you for the last one.”

“You do not,” Keith mumbled.

Coran raised one perfect, unimpressed eyebrow. “I did not devote my life to this theatre so I could treat my artisans poorly after it was mine.” He caught the eye of a girl dressed in black. “Acxa, guide these lovely people to the pit, if you would be so kind.” To Pidge and Lance, he said, “I’m terribly sorry, but I’m on next. It was delightful to meet you both.” He was gone in a whirl of skirts.

It was only Thursday, so there would be some elbow room. Still, the prospect of standing shoulder-to-shoulder with strangers for the next hour, picking out the flaws in his work as it loomed over them, made Keith step back. “I’ll find you at intermission,” he told the others, and slipped off in the opposite direction from Coran before they could reply.

Mostly out of habit, he found his way up a back stair and into his favorite box. It wasn’t the best seat, being too far forward and to the side, but it was out of the way enough to be rarely used. He was inside before he realized that it wasn’t entirely empty. The girl at the front of it glanced around, but he held up both hands and jerked his head questioningly at the seat furthest from her. She nodded curtly and turned back, long pale braid swinging with the movement. She had a journalist's pad propped against the rail and was scribbling on it from time to time. A journalist, then - Coran usually had a reviewer at this time in the run.

Insulated from the crowd, Keith started to relax properly. Coran had been right: he hadn’t been inside the Five Lions for weeks, maybe months. As his mind settled, the familiarity of it set his fingers to itching. He dug a scrap of paper and nub of pencil from his pocket and set to work. Coran was just coming on, which meant the first act was nearly over; he always liked to round it out. Behind him - Keith caught his breath. It was the drop he had done the previous winter. He knew every stroke of it, of course, and he had seen it against an empty stage, but this was something altogether different. The stage lights brought out the dark blues and caught the tiny stars. Coran, glittering in front of it, became the queen of the night.

Keith laughed aloud. The journalist shot him a glare, so he bit his lip and bent his head. By the end of the song, he had a fairly decent sketch of Coran. It wasn’t a caricature, but neither was it wholly realistic. He had tried to catch the way the audience saw him, exaggerating the height of the hair and the sweep of the skirts until he was a little more than human. It wasn’t terrible, so he left the finished drawing as an apology to the girl and departed under cover of the applause.

They were looking around for him by the time he made it down the stairs and through the shifting crowd. Pidge, perched on Lance’s shoulders for better viewing, waved vigorously until he got to them. “Outside,” he yelled in Lance’s ear, standing on tiptoe and grabbing his shoulder to do it. Lance nodded and swung Pidge down. They followed the current into the lobby and kept going. The air outside was cool, refreshingly so, and Keith leaned against the wall and took a deep breath of it.

“So,” Lance said, doing the same. “That was pretty great.”

“That was _awesome,_ ” Pidge said, bouncing in front of them. “How do they raise the drops? Can we go backstage again?”

“I expect Coran would let you in,” Keith told them.

“Speaking of the drops,” Lance said, and he tried not to tense up. “The night sky was yours, yeah?”

Keith swallowed and looked at the pub across the street, avoiding both of their eyes. “Yeah.”

“Hey.” Lance nudged his shoulder; when Keith found the courage to look, his face was bright. “It was beautiful. Why didn’t I know you could do that?”

Keith shrugged, feeling his own smile start. That seemed to happen a lot around Lance. “It never came up.”

They looked at each other for a long moment before Pidge coughed pointedly. Lance jerked his eyes away from Keith with a start. If he was red, it didn’t show in the shadows. “Right. We should - it’s late.”

“I want to see the rest,” Pidge objected.

Keith shook his head. “You’re on your own. I do need some sleep.”

“We can come back another night,” Lance said. Pidge groaned, but they let themselves be led away.

When Keith’s route split off a few blocks later, he hesitated. He had almost forgotten the panicked sprint across the roofs, but it came back to him when Lance looked at him with a thoughtful expression. “We’ll talk tomorrow?”

Keith let his eyes and shoulders drop in a sigh, but he did owe them that much. “Yeah.”

“Hey,” Lance said. When Keith looked up, he wore a small wondering smile. “I want to hear about the painting too.” He reached out and touched Keith’s jaw with long fingers.

Pidge said, “If you’re doing this now, I’m going back to the theatre.”

Keith ducked his head. Lance dropped his hand and sighed deeply. “For someone who is not my sibling, you fill the role extremely well,” he told Pidge. “Goodnight, Keith.”

They set off down the block, Pidge trotting backwards to wave. “Goodnight,” Keith called after them, and made himself turn towards his own street. When he climbed onto his own roof, Shiro stirred. “Sorry,” Keith whispered.

“Well?” Shiro wanted to know, voice thick with sleep.

“Not yet.” He touched his own face lightly, where Lance had earlier, and smiled in the darkness. “Soon.”


	5. Sure Beats Washing Dishes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He kept his eyes closed for a moment after they drew apart. Then he let his shoulders rise and fall in a sigh, opened them, and said, “Took you long enough.”

In daylight, the slate capping the Five Lions was pale green. In keeping with the theatre’s general aesthetic, it looked gorgeous from a distance. Close up, some of the tiles were cracked and a few were missing. They kept out the water, though; Coran would never risk his costumes. Keith loved it better for the damage. It belonged to him this way, when none of the people passing below could see the truth of it. Or - his truth, anyway. Perhaps Coran’s perfect presentation had its own reality.

The slate was cool against the back of his skull. Lance lay beside him, not touching but close enough to do so should either of them try to. He was waiting for Keith to speak, but there was no force to it. They had been lying here for some time, quietly watching the sky.

Pidge had left without explanation as soon as their papers were gone. This happened as many days as it did not. Shiro had gone off somewhere with Nyma and Rolo, though not without pointedly catching Keith’s eye. That had left the two of them. A small, nervous part of Keith had half-expected Lance to make some excuse and disappear as well. He didn’t, though, just given him the same companionable smile as ever and said, “Where to?”

It hadn’t, a less anxious part of Keith observed, been precisely the same smile. There was a flicker more warmth to it than he had seen appear for anyone else, the same touch that had lit his eyes when he had first seen Keith that morning. It was relaxing enough that he smiled back and said, “I haven’t seen the theatre in daylight for a while.”

“You don’t have to tell me anything,” Lance had said, when they got there. He had just scrambled over the lip of the roof, accepting Keith’s hand in order to do so. “I mean, you can if you want to, but you don’t owe me - an explanation, or whatever. I know that’s not how it works here.”

Keith looked at his face, at his blue eyes clear with sincerity, and then down at their clasped hands. “I know,” he said, and felt his mouth quirk up. “That’s not why.”

So they had found a comfortable bit of roof, tucked between two dormers. There they had lain for - Keith didn’t know how long. It was the sort of comfortable waiting silence that reminded him of evenings with Shiro, the sort that would take anything he said and keep it safe. He took a breath and started to drop words into it, then sentences, then paragraphs. He looked straight upwards as he talked, but for once he wasn’t analyzing the color above. Instead he let his mind sink into the familiar bottomless blue of the sky. Perhaps in repayment for his hours of study, it wrapped easily around him. He heard his own voice, distantly, as one heard a performance from deep backstage: he knew how the story went, but he didn’t need to listen closely enough to think about it. The cadences would give him the cue to come back when it was time. He did the whole thing: immigration, orphanage, Shiro, escape, new life scrabbled out of nothing but scavenged change and stubbornness.

Lance didn’t interrupt with word or movement. When Keith came back to himself some time later, cued by his own silence, he made himself turn his head before he could think about it. If he waited, he would not have the nerve. Lance wasn’t looking back. He lay, hands tucked behind his head and elbows jutting out, gazing up. He seemed as lost in the sky as Keith had been, Keith thought, and felt his mouth turn involuntarily up.

Slowly Lance blinked. He did move then, finally. Keith swallowed and made himself meet the blue eyes. He wasn’t sure what he had expected - been afraid - to see, but there was nothing identifiable there. “How do you know Coran, then?” Lance wanted to know.

That was safe enough ground. “Shiro worked a deal with him a while ago. We take tickets some nights. Well, Shiro takes tickets. I like it backstage; two jobs talking to people is too many.”

“And you do the backdrops.”

“Just a few so far.” Keith found himself smiling. He was starting to believe that it was all right; the only thing he could detect in Lance’s voice or intent gaze was curiosity, like he was absorbing everything and using it to fill the holes in his knowledge of Keith. It was no more difficult to talk than it had been last week by the river. “I’m getting better at them, though, and Coran wants more. I was going to go tomorrow after work. Want to come with me? It’s different when there’s no show running.”

The question slipped out before he thought about it, but Lance’s face brightened. “I’d like that. Do you always do sky?”

Keith glanced up at it again, just a fond flick of the eyes. “Usually. I sketch sometimes, for myself, but I do best with it for the big drops.” He paused. “That’s why I thought to go west, really. I keep hearing about how - how big the sky is there.” He made a face, embarrassed, but there was something like laughter bubbling below the feeling. There was no trace of the fear he had plowed through earlier to make himself talk or of the shame that he had taken his mind away to avoid. “Is that foolish?”

Lance heaved a sigh, the most expressive gesture he had made since they had settled on the slate, and flung one arm over his face.

“Apparently so,” Keith said, dry but not unhappy.

“Oh, that’s not it,” Lance said into his elbow. “It’s just, I like you so much. It’s completely ridiculous.”

It wasn’t a surprise, really, but it was the first time either of them had said it, and it startled him into laughter. Lance still had his face hidden. It occurred to Keith that he might be nervous, which seemed out of character. He propped himself on one elbow in order to angle a little closer, found his breath again, and said, “Were you planning to do something about that, ever?”

There was a pause. Then the arm moved just enough for Lance to peer over it. “You want me to?”

“I didn’t think I was being subtle,” Keith pointed out. “I didn’t think you were either, come to that.”

“Fair enough.” Lance dropped his arm entirely and sat up. Keith looked up at him. There was an expression there that he hadn’t seen before. It reminded him a little of the tired twist of the mouth that Lance gave him sometimes after a long morning selling: not at all like the bright look he turned on customers, but all the more valuable for that. It occurred to him that it was possible that very few people had ever seen Lance’s face the way it was now. There was happiness there, but no smile; the set of his mouth and eyebrows was determined. Carefully, he reached out and touched Keith’s cheek with long fingers. They were warm despite the cool of the rooftop, and Keith found himself holding his breath. Lance said, “Can I kiss you?”

Keith remembered to inhale, then. “I’d like that,” he echoed back, and was rewarded with the flicker of a smile. The hand on his face shifted to cradle his jaw as Lance leaned carefully down. His mouth, Keith found, was warm also.

He kept his eyes closed for a moment after they drew apart. Then he let his shoulders rise and fall in a sigh, opened them, and said, “Took you long enough.” Lance made an inarticulate noise of protest, but it was lost as Keith dropped back to the roof and laughed into the sky. Lance lowered himself down again too and wriggled close enough that they were pressed side by side. Keith fumbled for his hand and took it firmly in his own. He felt Lance sigh too, relaxing; then the brown head tucked itself against his shoulder, and they were back to looking at the sky.


End file.
